I'm running the trial installer, and I noticed Adobe has become even more creative with hiding away all its silent-and-utterly-unnecessary payloads. In addition to defining required components in the proxy.xml files like for CS3 and CS4, there's now also a "Media_db.db" SQLite3 database with all payloads and dependencies that needs to be modified... and in the mean time no one bothered to actually fix the installer to offer us ways to not install things we don't want in the slightest.

To adobe in general: I want to install what *I* want to install, not what you want to install on my computers. I don't want AIR, and Media Player, and your own flavour of a JRE, and... well basically of the 1.5Gb your Photoshop CS5 installer wants me to install, I only need 500Mb (namely: photoshop, cmap, type support, xmp and the required fonts and color profiles). How do I turn the rest of the payloads off?

Can we get someone who wrote the installer for this -quite frankly wonderful- program on the line so that they can tell us all how we can actually control the install process so that it does NOT install all the stuff Adobe wants to force onto our systems?

After looking at which files are involved with the installer, I have to conclude that Adobe succeeded in making an installer that is so convoluted (even after removing all dependecies in the proxy.xml and Media_db.db files, stripping all mention of conflicts and dependencies in every conceivable place, the installer still magically knows that there are dependencies) that there's no point in trying to offer people an explanation on how to take control of their install. Instead, I'm going with the cheap route: install in a VM, compare pre and post disk content and registry content, then just remove all the crap that isn't needed.

And thanks Adobe, for making living with you just that little bit more annoying.

On an advisory note for when a new installer is made, even if that means CS6, please invest some effort into writing a proper installer that puts the customer back in control. A normal installer with a normal "custom" button that shows you every individual component that will be installed, with a description of what it's fore, and an option to turn it off, as well as a way to turn off components you think are required when you know full well they're not. Pop up a little notice "Your installation may not work if you disable these components" and leave us to possible break the installation process instead of pretending to know better. There are only six components "essential" to Photoshop, for instance, requiring 539 Mb on disk. All the other things are for integration with the rest of the Creative suite, which you simply may not care about if you buy *just Photoshop*.

Please at least pretend to be customer focussed. Lying to us only works for so long (it stopped working quite a few years ago, in fact).

In the mean time I hope someone other than myself is more succesfull in figuring out the convoluted mess of "security by obfuscation" that comes with the CS5 installer. Good luck to all.

I'm as annoyed as you are, but there's a cost to the suggestion you're making.

Namely that it would multiply enormously the number of installations Adobe, as well as the writers of device drivers, plugins, anti-virus software, ..., would have to test.—Or alternatively, that many many installation possibilities would go untested, and that would normally mean more bugs. Not just more Adobe bugs, but more NVIDIA bugs, more Wacom bugs.

I don't think the current balance is right. I hate it. But I might hate the solution more.

I don't claim to be the ultimate expert on this but, like you, I did not want many of the "included" features.

During install I simply highlighted the "Photoshop CS5" line on the left side of the installer... that displayed all the "extras" on the right side panel... and I was able to easlily UNcheck that which I did not want.

Perhaps you didn't pay close attention to the numbers displayed by the installer then. If you do what you did, which is the typical user behaviour, you think you've unselected everything you don't want and feel you were in control. In the mean time, you unselected AIR and Media Player but they get installed anyway. What Gives?

If you examine the numbers, there's about a gig of stuff that gets installed when you unselect those six components:

That's a bit more than you bargained for. And without modifying the dependencies, all of these things will indicate that they depend on AIR and Media Player being installed, for instance, which they aren't. Adobe just wants to force-install those things on your computer.

As for the installer needing testing, you're probably right, but that wouldn't get in the way of offering an "advanced" install option that essentially removes the need for testing by saying "We tested the installs and think this is the best way to do it. If you think you know better than us, it's your responsibility and your install might not work. Click "OK" if you understood the words you just read". Regular users won't bother with advanced installs, enthusiast users might select it and then go "hmm, but I actually don't know what is and isn't required", and powerusers will go "FFS FINALLY!" and uncheck all the crap that's completely unnecessary =)

If it were the case that the result of Adobe's installation constraints + testing gave a rock-solid result, or even a rock solid result other things being equal, then the balance would fall the other way: we'd be better off with a certain amount of extraneous crap than with personal control.

But that isn't the case. As far as I can tell, from repeat installations today, Adobe's installation procedure can produce unpredictable results even in simple cases. (I'll report results when I've tested them thoroughly.) The part of Adobe given the task of developing installers is simply not skilled at it.

Perhaps, the more they try to nail the jelly down, the more chaos is likely to ensue. Flexible structures have a greater chance of robustness than rigid ones. Given more control, experienced users could iron out many problems for themselves—and pass the benefits to others via the forums. As it is, the Adobe engineers have done a poor job of anticipating glitches, and we're blocked from doing anything to make the job good.

As you've said, this has gone in the wrong direction from CS4 to CS5. How come Adobe don't learn? This seems incomprehensible, but as with many incomprehensible things, the explanation is probably banal. They must be both insulated from users' experience, and rewarded for failure. Will CS6 be even worse? [I should have said, will the CS6 installer be even worse. Like Mopaxian I think most of the content of CS5, crap shoved firmly aside, is truly wonderful, real progress.]

First off, I've been using Photoshop since version 5. Back then, caring about space was important. That concern has never gone away (luckily) and every application that I install is looked at to determine whether it's installing things it didn't tell you about, which is a potential security risk, and space drain. Also, having seen Photoshop go from 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 to CS all the way to CS5, I think I have a pretty damn good idea of what changes, bundled-application wise. Anyone who's used Photoshop for a long time will be able to tell you that no matter how good the bundled applications might be, in order to just use Photoshop, Bridge is not required. Adobe's own JRE is not required (what business do they have inventing a JRE of their own and the silently installing it?). Similarly, the Microsoft Visual Studio drivers already have their own "Microsoft VC 2005" and "Microsoft VC 2008" redistributables, which come with their own installers, Adobe has quite some cahones silently installing their own perhaps tampered versions instead of the official releases. AIR is not required. Media player is not required. WinSoft and plain Linguistics are not required, Review panel is not required, Mini Bridge is not required, NONE OF THESE COMPONENTS ARE NECESSARY. So yes, some of us "hackers" (I prefer the term customer, since it's my machine Adobe's products get installed on. My machine, not Adobe's. I say what gets installed, not Adobe) actually do know very well which dependencies must be met.

Second, space is expensive. If you work with 5400RPM or 7200RPM 1 TB hard disks, then good for you. Some of us work with 10k or 15k RPM disks, or high life-expentency SSD. These things cost lots of money, for little space. Any application that decides to dump an additional 1 GB of data onto those disks without you being able to tell it "no" is highly suspect.

My problem isn't that Adobe puts these applications on the disc, or even lets you install them --some of these applications are quite brilliant. Bridge is fantastic, for instance. I just don't use it-- my only problem is that Adobe won't let you *not* install them.

The person you're calling a hacker, generalisations aside being simply me, is someone who's been using Adobe products for quite a while, and knows quite a bit more about what has changed from version to version, including the installers, than someone who only just now bought CS5 for the first time and goes "neat!... wait, why does it need 1.5Gb? Ohwell, my 1.5TB harddisk is big enough."

This isn't about those people. It's about people like me, of which there are plenty, who don't like being lied to by an installer, and who will do whatever they need to do to prevent mysterious "you have no idea what they do because we won't tell you" applications from touching their hard disk. Ever heard of file bindings? Background processes? What will Adobe's JRE do? I don't know, you don't know, and Adobe's certainly not telling you in any of the documentation that comes with the install package. Will any of these applications try to run in the background to facilitate quick transfer between suite applications, even though you only bought Photoshop? They might, they might not, but again: Adobe's not telling.

I've loved many of Adobe's products, I just don't like people going "screw you, we're installing these apps of which you don't know what they do, and you can't do a damn thing about it". Yes, I can, and yes, I will.

Now, highlighting each successive component in the suite gives the option of deselecting any of its dependent components on the right. Not just the few that Adobe presumes are really optional, but the lot. Or almost the lot.

Tim, note that your installer now says it will require 1.8GB, falling apart as 247Mb for illustrator, 185ish MB for the listed components, and one component that's past the scroll pane, so unless that single component requires an incredible 1.3 GB of data, the original problem is still there, except now you see it demonstrated in the Suite installer, instead of specific application installer. We're still in "secret application install hell" =)

I'll have a look at the result of the remarkably useful utility TrackWinstall (http://www.withopf.com/tools/trackwinstall/) later today. This utility basically tracks changes to the filesystem and registry caused by an installation process by taking snapshots before and after a specified installer runs to completion. The resulting list of registry updates and files-placed-where-on-the-drive should allow me to make a .reg file that will only "install" the applications required to make Photoshop run, and a zip/rar archive containing only the files for those applications, in their proper locations so that they can easily be copied into "Program Files" (and "Program Files (x86)" on 32 bit systems).

A bit more hackery than I'd like (I'd prefer to just do some simple file changes and have the install take care of all this for me =) but the end result will be exactly the same. Except of course in this case, without running Adobe's installer on the machine Photoshop needs to actually be used on. If the process is painless enough, I'll do a writeup on how to do this yourself (because you should never trust someone who gives you a .reg file on the internet, no matter how relevant it seems to a discussion on not having to suffer the Adobe installer! =)

Hello. I’m the engineering manager for the Creative Suite and also responsible for the installation technology.

There’s lots of topics here, so let me try to address them one at a time.

First, our guiding principle for CS5 installers was to fix the top call generators for CS4 so that the installer succeeded more frequently. In addition, we made some significant architectural changes to better enable volume deployment scenarios. There is still a long way to go before the installers are perfect; but, gauging from the overall number of customer escalations over the past days since shipping we did succeed at dramatically reducing the number of customer escalations. Volume deployment tools are not yet released and we’ll see if those help volume deployment scenarios shortly. I’m not sure from where you heard the installers were going to be revamped from the bottom up. That’s never been the plan.

Adobe has become even more creative with hiding away all its silent-and-utterly-unnecessary payloads

The intent is to make the most common installation scenarios very simple, with a second goal to give the user as much configurability as we safely can. We’re not actually *trying* to hide anything. You can find the list of payloads and their use here:

The actual way that dependencies are determined is that each product lists its own subcomponents and how strong of a dependency that product has on each subcomponent. Subcomponents that are deemed “Critical” or “Required” do not show up as deselectable. Subcomponents that are “Recommended” or “Optional” do show up as deselectable. It sounds like the root disagreement here is the definition of what payloads should be Critical or Required vs. Recommended or Optional. Here’s the definition of the different dependency levels:

Critical –The product will not successfully launch without this payload.

Required - Without this payload the product’s primary functionality will not work as expected. The trick is defining what “primary functionality” means. Each product defines this on their own.

Recommended – Tertiary functionality does not work if this payload is not deployed.

Optional – There is no interactivity between the component and the product. Not installing the component should not adversely affect the product.

For Photoshop CS5, the installer includes six Recommended or Optional payloads: Extension Manager, ExtendScript Toolkit, Device Central, AIR, Media Player, and Fonts Recommended. Deselecting any one of them should result in that component NOT being installed. I just ran the Photoshop CS5 installer on a Windows XP system after deselecting each one of those six components and verified that indeed none of them were installed. (Note, I already had AIR on the system so I cannot really verify that AIR didn’t get installed in this particular install instance.)

Even deselecting all six leaves almost 1.5 GB to be installed. One could easily argue that many payloads marked as Critical or Required should instead be Recommended, such as Bridge. You have a valid point there.

The JRE point is an interesting one. In CS4 there were multiple copies (6, if memory serves) of the JRE being installed. Customers (and I) just didn’t know about it. Many different products just included the JRE as part of their product folder. In fact, Dreamweaver still does this today. We’ve pulled the other copies into one common payload. So now there are only two copies of the JRE being installed, the common one and the Dreamweaver one. The reason we tried to reduce the number of JREs installed is to reduce the cost in disk space to the customer as well as be able to more adequately address security vulnerabilities if one should occur within the JRE. These are all just normal JREs from Sun and haven’t been tweaked in any way; but, we need a known version to ensure the products keep running properly. If we just leverage the system version (on Mac) or a common version across the system (on Win) then we’ve encountered numerous customer escalations when the JRE is updated on that system.

Bridge in the Suite install case is also interesting. Because Photoshop has a Required dependency on Bridge, if you deselect Bridge with another product but then have Photoshop selected for install then Bridge will still be installed.

Can we get someone who wrote the installer for this -quite frankly wonderful- program on the line so that they can tell us all how we can actually control the install process so that it does NOT install all the stuff Adobe wants to force onto our systems?

I’ll try to dig up some instructions. Using the upcoming enterprise deployment toolkit is one method; but, that’s not going to be available for at least a few more weeks. It may take a few days to post instructions since we have to test the instructions before posting them. Note also that the product teams have not tested any configuration where the Critical and Required payloads are not installed, so the products may not function properly.

CS Live is really built right into many of the products. There isn't a separate payload for CS Live per se. So its not possible to remove it. It would be like removing a menu item from the product, which isn't possible with most of the Creative Suite products.

[Further edit: but it can only be used with a volume serial number. I dare say this will be the case for the CS5 version as well. Damn.]

Regarding CS Live, well, I think that was a truly retrograde bit of design. The Photoshop team had the sense to add an option to turn the interface off. The Illustrator people didn't. (How CS Live has any relevance within Illustrator is beyond me.) Prominent visual noise can only detract from a design environment. Some organisations may also consider that CS Live presents security issues. But none of this is about the installer.

I'm hoping that if the interface itself can't be excluded from an installation (for the reasons that you give), it might nevertheless be possible to exclude some individual payloads from installation.

Core:

AdobeCSXSExtensions2-mulAdobeCSXSInfrastructure2-mul

Menu items:

AdobeReviewPanel2-mul

AdobeStoryExtension-mul

BrowserLabCSLive-mul

SiteCatalystNetAverages1-mul

And I'll have a crack at disabling the menu display by looking up GUIDs/CLSIDs.

I really look forward to the enterprise development toolkit. (Was there one for CS4? I'm sorry to have missed it.)

[EW]There was one for CS4, though it left a lot to be desired. Primarily our customers want MSI/PKG packages, not a proprietary installer technology. We're closer to that in CS5 than we were in CS4; but, we're still a long way off. The CS5 enterprise deployment toolkit (branded as AAMEE) will output MSI and PKG packages after configuring what is included in the package. AAMEE isn't going to solve the problem outlined in the forum; but, it should make it somewhat easier to control what is in the installer package.

Regarding CS Live, well, I think that was a truly retrograde bit of design. The Photoshop team had the sense to add an option to turn the interface off. The Illustrator people didn't. (How CS Live has any relevance within Illustrator is beyond me.) Prominent visual noise can only detract from a design environment. Orgaisations may also consider that CS Live presents security issues. But none of this is about the installer.

[EW]There is a way to turn off CS Live in the registry (or a plist file) for all applications. Photoshop just surfaces that option in the UI. Let me try to track that down and post it. Note that if you remove any of the "Menu items" payloads below you'll have to turn off CS Live or they'll just come back.

I'm hoping that if the interface itself can't be excluded from an installation (for the reasons that you give), it might nevertheless be possible to exclude some individual payloads from installation.

Core:

AdobeCSXSExtensions2-mul

AdobeCSXSInfrastructure2-mul

Menu items:

AdobeReviewPanel2-mul

AdobeStoryExtension-mul

BrowserLabCSLive-mu

SiteCatalystNetAverages1-mul

[EW]I'm worried the applications may become unstable and crash if you remove the "Core" payloads. Removing the payloads listed "Menu items" should be pretty safe; but, you'll have to turn off CS Live in the registry first as noted above. None of the products have been extensively tested without the "Core" or "Menu items" payloads.

There were a couple of things like Bridge and the extensions manager that I do use that were mentioned above but otherwise I was able to customize my install and remove most of what I didn't want while installing my favorite Adobe CS5 applications without any problem at all. I am running those Adobe programs now sans any difficulty and btw, the one thing I missed in one install, the media player, was easily removed via the add-remove menu in Windows this time.

It was a slow install even with those things removed but for the first time in a long, long time it worked flawlessly and I have had no problems installing those applications right beside their older versions at all. I've checked and everything seems to be running smoothly and so far no major glitches with any of the programs. Other than it took practically forever to get it on my machine I am pretty happy with CS5 so far and I think the designers did a much better job of things this time. Kudos to them all. I am particularly happy with all the new things in Photoshop CS5. Everytime I think they can't possibly give me more in terms of what Photoshop can do for me and they do a major overhaul like this it just amazes me. I've been using Photoshop since V4, not CS4, but 4 and I am always duly impressed all over again with it every time I upgrade.

There have been a fair share of issues along the way. I'm not saying Adobe is perfect, but still, considering all the programs I use do I am not really all that surprised that it might be difficult to do those overhauls and upgrades and get it perfectly right all the time.Compared to some graphics programs using Photoshop CS4/5 is a bit like the difference between driving a Ford and a Ferrari. Both will get you there, sure, and yes, the Ferrari is a bit more tempermental under the hood sometimes, but still the Ferrari is a much more powerful and pretty ride, no?

I do wish we could get rid of Adobe Live or at least get it off the menu and out of the way. It's just clutter up there I don't need while I am working, but if you are worried about that security-wise you can simply disable access to the internet via any good firewall. I always do that with most of my programs just to be safe, and also to avoid any of programs doing any silent updating while I am trying to work.

Last thing I need in the middle of a detailed graphics project is a program using up RAM I need at that moment in time trying to update itself and I'm far more inclined to go directly to web sites as I need them via my web browser than via a program. I do understand Adobe is trying to make the updated and community stuff more accessable but I am a power user and I am not about to do it that way so it's pretty pointless having it in the program in so far as I am concerned.

While you can't actually delete those things it is possible to block access to the updater and the online functions fairly easily with a firewall and a few file renames. I just tell my firewall not to allow access in or out to those program and updater files, individually, and then I rename any updater files in the program files and in the updater file folder to something that can easily be changed back if I need to. They're in the program files, and also in common files in the OOOBE and updater 5/6 folders and most of them say updater something in case you are wondering what to look for. The online stuff also has it's own folder. It's a bit more hidden, but if you look around in the program folders and in the commin files you can usually tell which ones they are. I just make rules in my firewall blocking them and then I just add a particular number usually to the files I need disabled. That way if it causes problems down the road I can just go and name them back. Never has, but just in case I make it simple to remember, and in the meantime it's a lot better in terms of my system security than not.

I actually prefer just to go get my updates at Adobe myself as they come out. I don't like updating via the programs menus anyway. I like to manually download and keep the updates on disk in case I have to reformat my machine at some point and reinstall so I don't end up having to download them all over again. Makes more sense to me in the long run.

thank you very much for taking a lot at this for us. The link to http://blogs.adobe.com/OOBE/DeploymentReference.pdf certain helps, and your explanation of why you want your own JRE makes sense (if you rely on certain features in java that are not forward compatible, then indeed, relying on the system JRE will cause interesting problems down the line). Not quite sure if the same argument goes for the MSVC redistributables, since those stay available as separate and parallel installations, but perhaps there is a reason for this, too.

You note that components indicate their dependencies in terms of how "strong" they are, which is true, but in how many places are these dependencies indicated? One thing I noticed is that if a poweruser wants to take full control and turns off all the dependencies for Photoshop CS5 in the various proxy.xml (by XML commenting them off) and Media_db.db files (ALL of them =D), and removing mention of (most of the) entries in the SuitePayloads table in the master Media_db.db, the installer won't list all the removed components but still magically "knows" that the product with Photoshop's PayloadID has many dependencies that now cannot be met, throws up about 137 errors (of which most are triplicate or higher) and then stops (obviously =).

Are the dependencies hardcoded into the installer's executable as well, or did I simply miss another place where the last mention of dependencies can be disabled? I appreciate Adobe's attempts to get the installer to get things right for most customers, but given my specific wishes as a power user I will happily do test installs that go wrong twenty times on a machine here until I have a working minimal installation that can be applied to real workstations =)

Also, since you're actually responsible for the installation technology, it's only fair that I apologise for saying your team actively tries to hide components from us. But I would still recommend that "advanced" install option in the future, so that people get full install control, with freedom to completely mess up the installation (in which case, we can be highly thankful for the CS5 cleaner script!)

I think the reason that Adobe is "hiding" certain components from all of their users is fairly simple. They want to make it harder for pirates to hack the new versions as they come out. If you can find the parts of the program that contact the internet for updates and verification you can usually disable them fairly easily. I'm no programmer myself, just a fairly well trained computer user who has been using graphics programs for years and yet I am often able to figure out how to turn off the updaters and so forth just by casually looking around in my program and user folders and by reading a few posts online. I am concerned about tightening up my machine's security holes. I don't want ANY program on my machine to go online unless I want it to. Virus and trojan writers can use any open channel on my machine, any program that contacts the internet to do damage.

When I can get a virus just reading a news story or buy clicking an innocent link to some movie information on Google, and yes, both have happened to me in the past year, then I will automatically block ANY program on my machine that I don't feel needs constant internet access and that certainly does include my Adobe programs, Adobe Live notwithstanding. I'm about the furthest thing from a hacker out there. I feel that if I can do that, disable my program's access to upgrades et all, just by looking around then likely Adobe is not hiding them enough probably!

FYI, the whole CS5 suite is already all over the internet, hacked, and the program release is only days old! They've barely begun shipping. Like most I'm running the demos while I wait to get the real thing, but if you Google Photoshop CS5 etc you can see the pirates have already rendered any activation scenario a mute effort. This is why Adobe doesn't want it to be easy for people to play around with the inner workings of their programs. Photoshop is hands down one of the most hacked applications on the internet, always has been.

No offense, but you should be applauding their efforts at making it tougher.

It's admittedly probably pointless, but at least they are trying to keep people from pirating the software that most people here are purchasing for several months rent, right?

To anyone else reading this post, please do not respond to the"locked down for piracy" argument. This thread is actually turning out to be quite useful to a number of people, and having it degenerate into a "they did it to stop the warez, but look, it's already cracked" thread is the wrong direction it should take.

A thought occurred to me in the shower (engineers.. it seems to be our most productive place in the house) with regard to the JRE solution. For a future installer, it would probably be a better idea to indicate which java version things rely on, and offer people the choice to simply get a parallel install of a JRE that's simply the right one, or let users indicate that they have a compatible java version already installed and they would like to save that 100Mb of space and have the applications use the system version anyway (again, of course, with the waiver that they know what they're doing and that they'll have to run the installer again to add the certified working JRE before coming to Adobe to ask for help when things break)

I was actually just defending Adobe's probably reasons for not accomodating us when they have to for some very good reasons. What I said, about what's happening, well, that's nothing new and I am sure Adobe is well aware of it all going on, but I couldn't just sit here and read posts where people are basically giving Adobe heck for not letting them do whatever they want and not think it's less than fair under the circumstances.

Sure, I'd love to be able to kill whatever inconveniences me in the program at any time, but I think for security reasons that is not always very practical for Adobe to do when they are updating. If they did that, made it more accessable for the legal user, they'd inevitably also be making it easier for the non-legals too. Catch-22, if they accomodate the legals, they win points, but they also lose to the others too.

I'm just trying to cut Adobe some much deserved slack on that score. I'm just saying maybe we should be a bit less critical on here about that, and try to be more fair to them. They are fighting an uphill battle as it is. Trying to balance the usability with the security thing isn't always easy. We could be a bit nicer considering that...

Eric: I have not upgraded from CS4 Master Collection because the issue I had with the installer was that each application would install in about 2 minutes, but when it came to installing the 'langpak' for each application it would hang for about 12 minutes. So what should have been a 20 minute install turned into an hour and a half. Has that part of the installer been corrected?

The team is spread out across the globe. The CS Live team relating to these questions are in Germany, so I had to get data over the night. Here's the feedback I received from the team. I've not yet had the chance to try it out myself, though.

To turn off CS Live (at least internet access and self-updates for CS Live), you can use:

/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.AdobeOnlineHelp.plist

Set the AdobeOnlineDefault value to 0

On win its the analogous but in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Adobe/com.adobe.AdobeOnlineHelp

Also, a quick test of removing the "Core" and "Menu Items" payload shows that the products do continue to function properly.

For a future installer, it would probably be a better idea to indicate which java version things rely on, and offer people the choice to simply get a parallel install of a JRE that's simply the right one

It might be easier to just have the individual products load from a system location if the expected shared location isn't available. Then advanced users such as yourselves can pull it from the installer if you want. Making it an option in the installer dialogs will encourage many folks to remove it and then forget about it, which leads to technical support calls down the road when the JRE is updated on the system and the products stop working as expected.

I don't think anyone tested what happens if the common JRE is not installed for CS5. I would expect some products will go ahead and load the system version and some might just not load any version. If you do get around to trying it out, let us know what happens. I'm personally interested and would like to hear the results of any experiments. (ewilde@adobe.com)

There's lots of good points in this comment. Some of them will have to wait for a reply. The installer engineering team is currently consumed handling customer escalations with CS5 just shipping. Once we handle the high volume cases we can try to give you a more thorough response.

Not quite sure if the same argument goes for the MSVC redistributables

The MSVC runtimes we distribute are just the merge modules from Microsoft. They use the normal Microsoft installer logic to deploy. So if the runtime is already on your system it won't redeploy. Different versions of the runtime do indeed behave quite differently, even with symbol changes in some rare cases. So we absolutely must have the matching runtime version as what we tested against.

The questions about dependencies is something that will need to be answered in by the engineers writing the code. Its deeper than my knowledge of the technology. As such, it will probably take a couple of days before we get a full answer.

it's only fair that I apologise

Thank you. But I completely understand the frustration our customers feel. For volume customers its even worse since they have more difficult license compliance issues and heterogenous systems to support. If I didn't have thick skin I wouldn't survive in this job. Open, frank discussions are what can eventually lead us to a better solution for all concerned. Sometimes those frank discussions can be heated or painful to hear.

I think it may be under HK Local Machine, Software, Adobe on some machines? There's a string there that says Adobe Online Default and that's the only thing I could find that was remotely like the suggestion from Eric above. I did change it to that number just to see what happens.

Eric, quick question?

There is a setting under preferences that gives an SMS update check interval of 86400 which made me think that CS5 is ultimately going to check for updates whether I want it to or not? I did disable all my updater files as much as I could, but I am wondering can we turn that feature off too so we can close any security holes and choose to download our updates manually instead?

Sorry, but that's pet peeve of mine having programs updating while I am trying to work, or worse not even telling me that they are, and me coming back to find some update has totally screwed up my settings or something. I'm admittedly a control freak type who always checks the forum first before I do update to make sure there are no glitches or security issues with new updates. That did happen a few years ago and I really do hate reinstalling my Photoshop from the get go because of a glitch. I customize my settings and use a lot of plugs so that can take me a while. I do try hard to avoid that happening and I'd much rather go to Adobe, check the forums, then download new updates myself than just allow automatic updates.

Thanks!

Just a note for the folks here changing that setting did not remove the Adobe Live bit from my applications, but it did seem to disable me being able to click to go online via that menu. So mission accomplished I guess. It looks disabled to me.

Note: Eric you can ignore that last request for info. I think changing that setting actually accomplished both goals. No coming to Adobe via Adobe Live and now even if I go to update via the program menus I cannot, which suits me just fine. I don't think my programs will be updating without me or going anywhere without my permission which is exactly how I like it so I am now happy. So far so good, working just fine otherwise. I'm having a lot of fun here actually. These improvements are just amazing. Nice job to you all! I am definitely ordering the upgrades for Photoshop and Illustrator at least. DW, Indesign and Fireworks might have to wait till next year, but those two, definitely worth upgrading this time. Thanks!

Perhaps CSLive IS disabled on Win7. I did a straight install with no exceptions on Win7, and on XP, I excluded Device Central and Adobe Media center only. Yet both Registry's do not show Eric's string at Local Machine>Software>Adobe, or anywhere else.

I also don't find Media Center on Win7 (XP had it installed previous to installing CS5) and I don't see it in the payload list.

Finally, when I examine the Programs list in XP, CS5 Bridge shows up, bur CS5 Photoshop does not. Since I also have CS3 installed, maybe a conflict?